leanne at mogushi

leanne at mogushi, originally uploaded by vibromama.

"Does this look like fun? I don't recommend it.", were Leanne's thoughts after this afternoon outing on Amakusa's west coast in windy, marginal conditions. We snuck up on the wind and waves from behind a promontory, then paddled into it for about 20 minutes to see how far we could get (about 300 meters), then turned tail and ran on the waves 5km back to our starting point. But in the following wind we had a bit of trouble keeping formation and staying together. Our planned landing point was rocky and by now the waves had built to a dangerous level; we had to go with plan B and land on the sandy Mogushi strip. Even here we had to take care going around rocks on the approach and in this wind, there was only one chance. Leanne made a couple of small errors, blew a little close to a rock but then landed well. Clearly, we need more practice boat handling in the wind.